by Jerry eBooks
“Thanks for letting me see it,” Hayssen said in a strangled voice, “but I don’t think I’ll take it. Like you say, maybe Mr. Green will show up any day now.”
He walked out into the night feeling like he had been sandbagged.
He stood well back in the doorway, in the shadows, watching who came down the corridor. He should have done this sooner, he thought. Shadow Lehman’s office and watch who went in and came out.
The building was small, one of those reconverted homes on Rush Street, and there weren’t many offices to a floor. There was a loan office at the end of the hall and a walk-up beauty parlor a door down from that. Lehman’s office was the next one down, directly across from the elevator. A milk organization that specialized in educating people to drink milk in preference to coffee, beer or water was the only other office on the floor. The doorway Hayssen stood in gave access to a fire escape.
He had been standing there for well over an hour and no results. A few people had gone to the loan office, a brunette who didn’t need it had patronized the beauty parlor, and the milk man had stepped out for lunch and a quick one at the corner tap.
He tensed and then relaxed. False alarm. Another customer tor the beauty parlor.
Fifteen minutes later a janitor carrying a bucket came down the hall and stopped in front of Lehman’s office. He started doing something to the sign on the door. Hayssen swore softly and walked over.
The man was chipping away at the neatly lettered sign with a razor blade.
“Mr. Lehman move?” Hayssen asked in a friendly fashion.
The janitor looked up.
“Yes, sir! Mr. Lehman musta moved out some time yesterday. Called up this morning to say he had left.”
He started chipping away at the “h” in Lehman.
“Moved kind of suddenly, didn’t he?”
“He sure did! Why you know, he had files and cabinets and office machinery and I swear I never saw anybody take them out. Yes, sir, he just upped and disappeared.” Fie looked at Hayssen half suspiciously. “You have an appointment with him or something?”
Hayssen laughed. “Oh no! I was looking for office space and the building manager sent me up here to look at this one, see if I wanted it.” It seemed to be the thing to say if you wanted to look at a room or an office lately.
The janitor got out a key and opened the door. Hayssen followed him in and looked it over.
“Did this, ah, Lehman fellow do much business here?”
The janitor scratched his head. “I think maybe that’s why he left. I never seen anybody come up here to see him. Course I didn’t watch all the time, but it seems to me he never did much business at all.” Hayssen went to the window and looked out. Nice view; you could see over to Michigan Avenue and the lake beyond.
He looked back in the room and then suddenly knelt down by the baseboard. The outlet plug had a little cap over it, the kind that keeps dust and dirt from accumulating. The other plugs had caps over them, too.
“Did you put the caps back on the outlet plugs when Lehman left?”
“No, sir! I haven’t been in here since Mr. Lehman left!”
“Do you know of anybody else who would have?”
The janitor looked thoughtful. “No, sir, I don’t.”
Hayssen looked back toward the window and gasped. Fie hadn’t noticed it when he came in but there was a thin covering of dust on the floor, marred only by where he and the janitor had stepped.
“Was this space vacant for very long before Lehman rented it?”
“About six weeks, but that’s all.” The janitor looked concerned. “Is there something wrong? Mr. Lehman in trouble?”
“Maybe.” Hayssen found a bill in his pocket and held it out to the janitor. Money might do more in this case than flashing his badge would. Besides, some day somebody would investigate that badge of his and find out he had got it for so many boxtops and the cost of mailing.
“What do you know about Lehman? What kind of a guy is he?”
“Well, just sort of an average fella. Medium height, mebbe a little taller than average. Kind of, well, plain lookin’. Didn’t dress fancy or anything.”
“Just the all-around, typical businessman,” Hayssen said disgustedly. He wished he had the bill back.
“Look, you already told me that he didn’t do much business. Do you remember anything else peculiar about him?”
The janitor brightened. “Well, yes, I do! I remember when he moved in he got a tape measure and measured the office. I asked him why and he said the office had to be at least fourteen by sixteen. I thought that was kind of odd but naturally I didn’t say anything.”
The janitor looked around the office again. “Yes suh, it sure beats all how having cabinets and files and things makes an office look smaller.”
Lehman had wanted an office at least fourteen by sixteen, Hayssen thought.
And Martin Green had wanted an apartment at least fourteen by sixteen before he would rent it.
And both of them had seemed SO able to move without the benefit of any moving company.
Later that afternoon Hayssen went to a local chemist he knew who did research and analysis for various hospitals. He kept some guinea pigs on the premises and Hayssen left him with a small portion of the contents of Flaherty’s vial and specific instructions as to just how to use it.
It might be foolish, he thought, but he wouldn’t be satisfied until he had tried it.
It was almost dark when he got to his office. He leafed through the mail and then pulled open a drawer and took out a tumbler and a bottle of cheap bourbon. He poured himself half a glass and settled back with a sigh.
Take a mayor with cancer who bought himself a vial of atomic water and then changed his mind and claimed it was a political plot. Add someone who liked to kill people with fine steel springs or else guillotine them with a pretty fantastic snicker-snick, and mix thoroughly with one Martin Green who had rented an apartment and then never used it—except when Hayssen came to see him for about fifteen minutes one sunny afternoon.
Sprinkle lightly with somebody who rents an office but never used the electric outlets and doesn’t muss the dust that was left on the floor from a previous six-week vacancy, and add one curious blonde who could probably straighten out the whole mess if she wanted to.
And the result of it all was a severe case of heartburn.
He could call her, Hayssen thought. He could call her and apologize and try another way.
But no, that wouldn’t do. It was up to her to call him.
The phone rang.
He grabbed it eagerly.
It was Flaherty. Hayssen was to drop Lehman. No, no. There was no explanation.
He stared at the phone in disbelief. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “I’m sorry but I can’t do it.”
A little later he washed up in the mop closet down the hall and left.
He left just a moment too soon to hear his phone ring with an agonizing insistence.
“Rather cold tonight, isn’t it, sir?”
The boy was looking up at him with sightless eyes of gray.
Hayssen grunted, took his paper, and dropped a quarter in the newsboy’s hand. It must be tough, he thought, to be blind like that.
Ten minutes later, after changing street cars and jostling through the crowds, he sensed that he was being followed.
There wasn’t much that he could pin it on. A familiar bit of cap that followed in the crowds when he transferred, a swift glance at a face that he had seen before.
A dogged animal awareness as much as anything else.
He got off in his home block and untitled story casually inspected the people on the walks. Whoever it was who had followed him had given up. There was a pushcart peddler at one end of the block whom he didn’t remember ever seeing before but then there were no laws against pushcart peddlers.
The others on the walk were hurrying for home through the chill night. Rather less than the usual number, he thought, but then he
had spent a lot of time changing streetcars and dodging into doorways, trying to shake his elusive follower.
He stopped in a corner grocery store.
Whatever a young bachelor gets to know. How to cook for himself. He idly wondered how good a cook Cathy Cooper was.
He picked out enough cans to get a supper together and took them to the counter. The clerk was a new one. They talked about sports and politics and inflation, the usual chitchat you mull over with shopkeepers and hired help.
There was something odd about the clerk, Hayssen thought. Something about him, in a way, was familiar.
The clerk was putting the cans and the bottles and the packages of meat into a bag. He finished with the packing and looked up.
“You’re sure there’s nothing else, Mr. Hayssen?”
Hayssen started. He remembered now.
The accent.
The same peculiar accent that Catherine Cooper had. And Martini Green.
And how had the clerk known his name was Hayssen? He didn’t remember giving it. And the clerk was new.
“No,” he said slowly. “I don’t need anything more.”
He took the bag of groceries and started for the entrance. He had a view of the street through the plate glass window at the front. There was nobody on the street now. Nobody but the pushcart peddler and a newsboy on the corner and what looked like a cop on the beat.
The newsboy was familiar.
The same newsboy who had sold him a paper outside his office a half-hour ago. The familiar bit of cap he had seen so often on his way home, the face that had followed him.
And he would never have thought of the newsboy because the newsboy had pretended he was blind.
Gray contact lenses and a winning personality.
It had been very clever.
The clerk was at the front door, standing in front of it like Horatio at the Bridge. And just as determined. A slim, delicate looking pistol had appeared in his hand.
“I think you better wait here, Hayssen.”
Just like Riverview, Hayssen thought. A thrill every minute.
He threw the bag of groceries at the clerk and chopped at him roughly with the side of his hand.
There was a grunt of pain and then Hayssen was through the door and legging it across the street for his apartment building. A voice trailed after him yelling “Stop!”
The fake cop was heading for him now, pulling at his holster.
A thin beam of violet colored light cut through the chill air on Hayssen’s left. It splashed against a brick wall and Hayssen spotted a little charred hole in the bricks before the beam snapped off.
He was in the apartment building now, safe in the elevator.
Safe.
“You were in a hurry, Mr. Hayssen. Anything wrong?”
He could feel his hackles rise.
The fat little man who operated the elevator was new to him. Too new.
He turned and rabbit-punched the operator, then grabbed the controls and shot the cab up to the fifth floor.
He was out of the elevator and heading down the hall for the stairway that led to the roof. The door wasn’t locked and a moment later he was on the pebbled roof, momentarily silhouetted against the velvet sky.
A flash of purple light ate away a piece of the cornice and he dropped flat to the roof. He could hear feet pounding on the stairway leading up.
He rolled to the rear of the building, safe for a moment in the shadows. Ten feet below him was the top of the fire escape. He let himself over, trying to grip the slippery edge of the cornice, hung for a moment, then dropped to the escape. The fall jarred him and he could feel the warm ooze of blood in his mouth where he had bit his tongue.
A moment later he was running quietly down the escape, slipping noiselessly past lighted windows where other tenants of the building were eating or playing cards or watching the television.
He could hear men searching the shadows above, looking behind the chimneys and the squat little shack that housed the top of the roof stairway.
Looking for him.
He was almost to the alley before one of them poked his head over the roof and hissed to his companions.
Hayssen was in the alley now, dodging down it for dear life. There was the clatter of men on the fire escape and soon they were padding silently after him.
They had seen him!
There was a flash of light and Hayssen dodged frantically. A thin smoky line appeared on a garage behind him.
He ducked through a backyard and headed for an apartment construction project, half a block away. Maybe he could lose his pursuers m the maze of lumber, cement, steel beams, and workmen’s shacks that dotted the site.
At least he could gain time. Time enough for startled housewives and property owners to call the police.
With a sinking feeling he knew his pursuers knew it, too. They wouldn’t be careful now. They would be out to get him as soon as they could.
What a sucker, he had been. He had always considered that he had a slight margin of safety, that Cathy would warn him when his life was in danger, when Lehman’s hoods were after him.
Fools are made, he thought.
And fools are buried.
He ducked behind a small mound of cement bags and sat down, breathing heavily. He could hear the others moving noiselessly about in the lot. Their whispering and the creak of boards as they walked across them carried well through the night.
A thin film of sweat covered his face and he brushed at it with his coat sleeve.
An alley cat wailed for a second and then was abruptly quiet in a sudden flash of violet.
A beam of light appeared a hundred feet away but Hayssen couldn’t see anybody behind it. They were using some new kind of flashlight, he realized. Beams of light that didn’t flare straight ahead but could curve and probe around corners.
A sudden dazzle of light showed over the top of the cement bags and there was a light rustle as a thin wire arched over the top. He moved out of the way just in time and watched the wire coil tightly around the bags and cut into them. Dry cement spurted from the bags and he dodged over to a stack of lumber.
Moments later the men who had followed him were clustered around the spot where he had been. They inspected the ground and a low murmur of disappointment came from them.
He thought of his gun with regret. It was back at his apartment, carefully hidden under clothing in his bottom drawer.
He felt along the ground and located half a brick.
He hefted it casually. This was for Jock.
The brick was well-aimed. It hit the newsboy and there was a sudden scream of anguish.
They were after him again, throwing away all pretense at stealth and openly flaming piles of lumber and steel beams. Lights were going on in the houses around the project and Hayssen prayed that somebody would call the cops.
He was running parallel to a half-built brick wall. An I-beam lay on the ground, jutting out from the wall, and he fell over it. Pain twisted his face and he could feel the ligaments near his ankle tear.
In the distance he could hear the faint scream of sirens.
They would get there just in time to list his name with the other unsolved murders of the year, he thought.
A beam of light curled around the side of the wall and dazzled his eyes. There was a shout from one of his pursuers and then they were clustered around him.
He couldn’t make them out. They were formless shadows, standing in back of the circle of light cast by one of their flashlights.
The police sirens were a lot nearer.
The shadowy figures scattered and one of them flicked a violet beam along the wall, at an upward angle so the cut would be on a slant.
The top of the wall hung there for a moment before it came crashing down on him.
The wail of the sirens sounded dimmer and then faded out altogether.
“Here, drink this,” a voice commanded.
Hayssen felt the lip of a glass press against his mou
th and he swallowed automatically. The liquid was sweet and a trifle oily. After taking it, his head felt oddly clear and yet thick at the same time.
He was lying on a couch in an office. The man who had offered the glass of liquid looked familiar. Rather thin and balding with a pleasant face. Glasses.
“My name’s Arthur Lehman,” the man offered, seeing Hayssen’s puzzled expression.
Hayssen dropped the glass and sat up on the couch. There was something about Lehman. Something that was supposed to be dangerous.
But he couldn’t remember what it was.
His head began to swim and he felt Lehman’s hand on his shoulder, firmly pushing him back down on the couch.
“It will take a few minutes for you to feel like yourself, Hayssen.”
“What happened?” Hayssen asked inanely. His tongue felt like it was coated with glue.
Lehman smiled urbanely. “We got to you just in time, before Flaherty’s bully boys could do you in. Another minute and you would have been a goner.”
Hayssen digested the information slowly. Flaherty’s bully boys.
It didn’t seem right. He had been working for Flaherty who had hired him to do—something—about Lehman. And now Lehman had saved his life and it was Flaherty who was trying to murder him.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly. “I was working for Flaherty. And now you say that. Flaherty was trying to kill me. It doesn’t add up.”
He sat up and held his throbbing head. It was difficult to think straight about this. There were little bits of information that didn’t fit, little bits of information that somehow managed to elude him when he tried to think of them.
“I know,” Lehman sympathized. “It’s hard to believe. But Flaherty asked you to give up the case, didn’t he?”
Now that Lehman mentioned it, he vaguely remembered Flaherty calling him up and telling him to drop it.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And you refused, didn’t you?” Lehman was being very logical about it.
Again he nodded.
Lehman looked patronizing. “I don’t see how it fails to add, then. It makes a kind of dangerous sense for you. Flaherty had hired you to investigate me, Hayssen, and then wanted you to quit. When you refused, there was only one alternative. To kill you.”